Sliding oven racks include slide assemblies for enabling the oven rack to be slid in and out of the oven cavity. The slide assemblies typically include two or more interconnected c-shaped forms, depending on the desired functionality, with ball bearings residing between the forms for facilitating movement.
Conventionally, sliding oven racks such as these include a sub-frame to provide additional assembly strength and to address premature ball bearing failure, which can often result from side-to-side movement of the slide assemblies, thereby leading to torsional over-loading. This torsional over-loading is often referred to as “toe-in,” meaning that the weight of the oven rack and bearing assemblies, over time, can cause the tops of the slide assemblies to begin to tip or roll inwardly toward each other. In the prior art, toe-in can occur when the slide assemblies are not properly attached to the left and right sidewalls of the oven cavity. This will result in the entire assembly being rendered useless over time.
To combat toe-in, some sliding oven rack assemblies include anti-tip and retention design elements that interact with the left and right lateral sidewalls of the oven cavity. In particular, these types of assemblies require design elements that abut, capture, or interface with ribs or other formations on the sidewalls or with wire ladders attached to the sidewalls. These designs require added complexity to the sidewalls and result in higher costs. Often times in order to implement these types of prior art sliding oven rack assemblies, substantial and costly redesigns are required on the part of the original equipment manufacturer.